Harvesting devices are useful for reducing the amount of manual labor that is required to harvest agricultural crops. For example, a very large harvesting machine can typically be used by a single operator to harvest many acres of wheat, corn, tomatoes, and other crops where the plant itself is necessarily destroyed during the harvesting operation. However, the picking of tree-grown and vine-grown fruits, such as oranges and apples, where the parent plant sustains only minimal damage during harvesting, is typically done by hand, utilizing ladders, clippers (for example in the case of lemons), bags, and transfer boxes, and is therefore highly labor intensive.
Various automated devices are known for reducing the time and labor required for fruit picking, so as to lower the overall cost of the fruit that is harvested. However, these known fruit harvesting devices typically cut or twist the fruit from their stems using complex technology that requires substantial maintenance, such as whirling blades, iris blades, fruit grabbers and twisters, or even lasers. Moreover, the complexity of these known mechanisms significantly increases the likelihood that a malfunction could damage some of the harvest. In addition, many of these known devices do not automate the step of bringing each item of fruit to a receiving container after picking, and therefore they can provide only a minimal improvement in speed and efficiency as compared to picking by hand.
The high cost of manufacturing and maintaining these known automated picking devices, the limited reductions that they offer in labor costs, and the potential of damaging valuable crops if the device malfunctions, have largely prevented these automated picking devices from being economically practical.